Milan, the entire career of photojournalist Livio Senigalliesi at the Chiostri di Sant'Eustorgio

From Nov. 25, 2022 to Jan. 8, 2023, the Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini in Milan will host Diario dal fronte, a retrospective that traces the entire career of Livio Senigalliesi (Milan, 1956), one of the most internationally acclaimed photojournalists who, in some 30 years of work, has chronicled 25 conflicts around the world.

The exhibition, curated by Barbara Silbe, presents a selection of 50 black-and-white and color photographs, collected in numerous war scenarios, from the Middle East to Kurdistan, Kuwait to theSoviet Union,Africa to many others.

An in-depth feature is devoted to Vietnam where, retracing the " Ho Chi Minh Trail," he reported on the effects on local populations ofAgent Orange, the dioxin defoliant sprayed by the U.S. Air Force on forest areas where the Vietcong were nesting.

Through his attentive and impartial gaze, Senigalliesi has built an archive over the years that proves today to be a valuable historical record of the territories and populations affected by the conflicts, taking a special interest in providing documentation of the “collateral” effects they leave behind, especially on civilians.

The exhibition leads to further reflection on issues of peace. Indeed, these very months mark the 60th anniversary of Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII ’s encyclical published in April 1963. The saintly pontiff was writing at a historical moment of great cultural and economic change, marked by a new phase of international relations dominated by the nuclear threat following the Cold War between the United States and theSoviet Union, in the aftermath of the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban crisis of 1962, with an emphasis on human rights, the common good, respect for minorities, communication and respect among nations, political refugees and disarmament.

Highly topical topics also taken up several times by Pope Francis, who recalls how peace is “also a challenge that asks to be met day after day. Peace is a conversion of the heart and soul” (message for the LII Day of Peace, Jan. 1, 2019) and “an action of building a new humanity”(Encyclical Brothers All, 2020).

Livio Senigalliesi (Milan, 1956) began his career as a photojournalist in the early 1980s, devoting himself to the major themes of Italian reality, workers’ and students’ struggles, immigration, marginalization, the problems of the South, and the fight against the Mafia. At the end of the 1980s he widened the range of his collaborations and increasingly turned his attention to international current events, publishing extensive reportages in major national and foreign newspapers.

His passion for photography understood as testimony and his attention to the historical events of the last decades have taken him to hot fronts such as the Middle East and Kurdistan during the Gulf War, to the Berlin of division and reunification, to Moscow during the days of the coup that sanctioned the end of the Soviet Union, and to Sarajevo, where he experienced among the people the longest siege in History. He followed all phases of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and documented the heinous aftermath of wars and genocides in Africa and Southeast Asia.

In recent years he has focused his efforts on two major themes: civilian victims of conflicts and the human condition of immigrants in Italy. In addition to his exhibitions and books, he carries out educational projects for school students so that his direct testimony brings young people closer to the themes of peace and war and an understanding of forced migration.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Chiostri di Sant’Eustorgio.

Pictured: Livio Senigalliesi, Kiev, Ukraine, January 25, 2014. Mass anti-government protests

Milan, the entire career of photojournalist Livio Senigalliesi at the Chiostri di Sant'Eustorgio

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